The Herald, Sharon, Pa.

Local News

January 20, 2007

Pro-Life speakers challenge listeners

By Matt Snyder

MERCER COUNTY — Pro-Life of Mercer County held their annual prayer breakfast Saturday morning with Dr. David Forte as their guest speaker.

Forte is a professor of law at Cleveland State University who served in the United Nations during the Reagan administration and has helped draft legislation in the Ohio General Assembly dealing with, among other matters, abortion, according to biographical information.

He began his speech with a story of visiting Berlin while it was under Communist rule, just after West Germany began to teach about the Holocaust. Two young women told him, after learning the history, “We felt like going home and spitting in their (parents’) faces.”

In comparing the atrocities of the Holocaust to what he and other anti-abortion advocates see as the taking of human lives, Forte said, “At that moment, I promised that my children will not say that about me.”

Speaking to a crowd of around 200 people, young and old, Forte gave an informative address on Supreme Court decisions on abortion since Roe v. Wade, the controversial decision that legalized abortion.

Forte argued that justices provided no rationale for their decision, and that the Supreme Court was transformed into a policy-making body as a result.

He said presidents were being elected based on which judges they would nominate, and justices were being nominated in order to enact public policies that could not be created through the electoral process involving the people.

Also speaking was Jeniece Learned, executive director of Pregnancy Services of Western Pennsylvania, a pro-life crisis pregnancy center on North Oakland Avenue in Sharon.

She spoke on the center’s nearness to having its own ultra-sound machine, and put out a call for personnel to operate it.

Mrs. Learned, who announced that she was stepping down from the pregnancy center while she fights breast cancer, reported that an “abortion-minded” mother had decided to see her pregnancy through after seeing the ultra-sound images.

Then Mrs. Learned asked, “How many African-Americans do you see here?” She asked them to raise their hands. Only the Rev. Russell Penn, who gave the invocation, appeared to raise his hand.

“One,” Mrs. Learned answered. She said at the pregnancy center, both white and black girls seek help, and also said black women are three times as likely to seek an abortion.

“We need someone who will stand up for black women in this room,” Learned said.

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